From Jay-Z to Meditation: Why Jesse Kirshbaum Walked Away from Artists

In this episode of You vs You, Jesse Kirshbaum shares his powerful journey of authenticity, spirituality, and personal growth in the age of AI and digital transformation.

From the world of artist management and music culture to building brand partnerships with purpose, Jesse reveals how life’s challenges and synchronicities reshaped his path.

We dive into how the rise of artificial intelligence pushed him closer to God, why authentic expression matters more than ever, and how tools like meditation, therapy, and the ocean became anchors in his spiritual and creative life.

Jesse also opens up about living with ADHD, transforming pain into purpose, and learning to face fear with courage.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, creative, or seeker on a journey of self-discovery, this conversation will inspire you to trust your path, embrace authenticity, and find meaning in the moments that connect us all.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• How AI unexpectedly deepened Jesse’s faith and spirituality

• The role of authenticity in leadership, creativity, and branding

• Why meditation, therapy, and nature are essential tools for clarity

• Transitioning from artist management to brand partnerships with purpose

• Turning ADHD into a creative superpower

• The real difference between pain vs. suffering in growth

• How to face fear, sit in the fire, and trust synchronicity

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's not me taking ten percent of an artist to
do a thing. It's like, Jesse Jesse Kershman, me talking
to someone with a big boss and a big name.
I live at the intersection of music, brand partnerships, and technology.
My agency is really focused on helping brands make deeper,
meaningful connections to their consumers by leveraging the power of music.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
You've done it all right, like you, You've been an agent,
You've worked with brands. You get all these things.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
What a success to you?

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Success would be right If you're not getting better a
little bit every single day, you're getting worse.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
The pain has to happen.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Every door is open to you. You can get the
White House out of the phone like that, like there's
nobody that's not taking your call. The key to success
that I've learned.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Is I hope you enjoyed this episode of You versus You,
and these conversations are inspiring you and are bringing value
to your life. Please make sure to subscribe, join the community,
and don't forget to share with anyone who you think
needs to hear this. Thank you for supporting the show.
Let's get back to our episode, Jesse. Let's get right
to it. AI made me fall in love with God.

(01:10):
Talk to me about that.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
In this AI world where everywhere you look, AI is
omnipresent and people are continuing to just like pump out
content with AI and it's your thought partner, and it's
moving the stock market and you know you're using AI
to vibe code and AI just feels like everywhere I
turn in marketing and music and culture, AI is present

(01:35):
and just making an impression and making an impact and
kind of taking over people's minds. It's just overwhelming how
much content and synthetic content's coming. And it's like people
are telling me, oh, I used AI and I wrote
poetry and now I have godlike flow. And another person
I was in the studio with will I Am and

(01:58):
he was explained to me he's brilliant and he's explaining
to me how he has created this AI and the
AI is analyzing his dreams and then the dreams are
now being created into a play or a movie and
AI is doing all of that, and I'm just looking
at him and saying, that's where you've lost me. In

(02:18):
this world where there's so much noise and there's so
much content, authenticity becomes such an important thing and such
a powerful frequency. I just continue to hear that authenticity
resonates more. I'd rather hear you have the crackle in
your voice. I'd rather see you slip. I'd rather see
you be human than perfect. And in this AI world,

(02:42):
the more I want to be is authentic. So how
do I actually write the poetry, not have AI write
the poetry? And I'm trying to get to my truest,
authentic self and that is the godflow. So what this
AI boom has created is, I think more a need
to tap into authenticity. What I want to do is

(03:06):
just connect deeper to God, and AI reminds me of
that while everybody's pumping this content out. But then the
question is how do I tap into God?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Right?

Speaker 1 (03:16):
What is that connection to God?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Mean?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
I grew up traditionally and culturally Jewish, but like going
to temple and hearing Hebrew doesn't, you know, make me
feel closer to God. Organized religion in general doesn't make
me feel closer to God. So then I'm like, well,
how do I feel a God flow? And so I
realized that like it comes to me through meditation, which

(03:40):
really changed my life, changed my whole path in my career.
But meditation the ocean, which we've got here in Miami,
and it's beautiful, and every time I go see it, it
reminds me. It connects me being around spiritual people talking
about real things, real authentic things. Psychedelics can have a

(04:01):
place in connecting to God, studying and understanding different forms
of connection to God, being in flow, being in rhythm,
Like that's the goal of I think a creator.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
Why do you think that meditation and the ocean create
that sinking moment within yourself and God?

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Different reasons meditation. When I was like an agent, my
background was representing artists, and when I was in my
twenties and early thirties, I looked a lot older than
I do at this stage in my life because I
was just like, every day's killer be killed. You know,
the artist representation business is a very challenging business. Golden

(04:45):
rule of management is not when you're if you're going
to be fired, it's when, And it's just a very
hard business. As an agent Indie Asian, I was representing
all these artists and I just thought, like every day
I'm in a concrete jungle. And my friend was like, WHOA,
you sound like you need therapy, but really you'll gain
from meditation. And I was like, well, what's this meditation thing.

(05:07):
So this is ten years ago. I started meditating. I
you know, first went to therapy like he had suggested,
and after about six months of working through some of
my thoughts, then he said you're ready. And I started
to study from meditation, and I just it's it's a
simple technology. It's very easy. It's mantra based. It's twenty
minutes once twice a day. And as you start to

(05:29):
do that consistently and you start to open up your
mind and just think about nothing, you start to connect
to the universe, and then things start to fall into place.
You start to, you know, feel aligned with the divine
and transcend. And I started to realize I don't want
to represent artists, and I rebranded my company and I

(05:51):
started representing brands. And it just allowed me to be
so much more creative and be as big as my
ideas and really step into my own. And I credit
meditation so much for just allowing myself to feel the
rhythm of the world. The ocean's a different one. The ocean.
I'm a cancer, I'm a water sign. I just love

(06:13):
the ocean. If you look at it, it's so infinite,
it's so hard to think about. Like, it just makes
my mind go both directions. When I think about the ocean,
or I look at the ocean, or I sit by
the ocean, it just feels so vast and abundant. It
just brings me to an infinite possibility.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
And can you talk about switching from being a manager
to brands? Right? I think any manager at some point
starts feeling like, what am I doing to myself?

Speaker 3 (06:47):
What was that trigger point for you?

Speaker 2 (06:49):
What was the moment? Was it something that was a
build up over time, or it was just like you
woke up one day and said, I'm done. I'm going
to now be in the service business, but in a
different way where I'm not, you know, in the roller
coaster of somebody else's up and down, right, because it's
I think one of the hardest things about being a
manager is you're emotionally dealing and carrying somebody else's way,

(07:13):
their own problems, their own ideas of the world, and
you have to even when it sometimes against your own
moral code. Sometimes you have to position the client in
a place where they can feel comfortable, even at the
exchange of your own piece. So was there a moment
that just said that's it, Jesse, you have to get

(07:34):
out of this.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
It was not necessarily a moment. It was a you know,
ten year, illustrious career of finding and developing artists in
a really early stage in their life and then helping
them to break and connect to management, to connect to labels.
I was the booking agent, but I was doing so
much more and I just felt so creative. But as

(07:58):
the artists would get bigger and more successful, the role
of the booking agent just kept getting more diminished, and
you keep getting more marginalized, and every one of the
big agencies were just like out to get me, and
I just had to develop a really hardcore mentality of like,

(08:20):
these artists are going to leave, and you know you're
playing a game against all the different agencies. The big
ones are, you know, trying to eat you, the indie
ones are trying to get you, and it just felt
like a super competitive role. The artists were amazing creative souls,
but as this place where you have very little leverage

(08:42):
because you're all everybody in the service industry is pretty expendable,
you just end up feeling like it's a thankless job.
It's a twenty four to seven job. Every weekend. As
you know, my agency would have thirty forty to fifty
bookings weekend, something would go wrong, only get a call

(09:02):
when something goes wrong. So my weekends were you know,
consistently shitting the bed so to speak, because I didn't
know what I was doing. I was kind of figuring
it out as I was going. It wasn't like I
went the mail room wrote of like William Morrison caa
where you give your whole twenties up and then eventually
you know, if you make it, you've shown that you've

(09:23):
kind of given so much of yourself to this industry.
You've learned all facets. You finally get to represent artists
or have your own desk, or have your own phone
mine or keep your own email, like with your actual name.
That wasn't interesting to me. So I decided to go
outside of the system, Go Indie, Go raw, And at
twenty two I signed Clips and they were the first

(09:45):
group I ever represented. So I had just been doing
this and with the Clips like it was almost a
miracle that they signed with me. They were on the
Grinding Street tour. It was a mess. I caught a
hold of them and they were like, yeah, if you
could fix my tour, we'll sign with you. And so,
you know, my reward was I had no idea, but

(10:06):
my boss at the time and I we worked all weekend,
you know, rerouting it, taking it from street clubs to
you know, independent venues and hard ticket shows, and the
tour turned around, the song took off, the album came out,
you know, star Trek Pharrell, it was his first group,
and the album went number two on the pop charts.
So I'm now twenty three representing the Clips with the

(10:30):
number two album on the pop charts. And then from
there I did ten years of artists representation. Represented a
whole bunch of these artists that were great and really
in this kind of niche of the college market. But
I was always getting fired. I was always getting you know,
somebody who was making a promise to go on tour
with Kanye West. And if I'm a twenty four year

(10:51):
old kid and I need to figure out, you know,
this is my shot, I would have to listen to
those options. And so we would just always be finding
and losing artists and that just became what we were
you know, the conversation on the street. Even though we
were doing amazing things. We were playing Coachella, we were
doing deals with Tommy Hill Figure, we were doing Spotify's
marketing in the college market, and like doing all sorts

(11:12):
of partnerships, people cared only about like who we signed,
who we lost, And then sitting in meditation and like
finally like catching my breath every morning, intentionally, I was like,
I don't want to do this. This is just like

(11:32):
what am I building. I'm building nothing. I'm just like
an ATM machine of crazy stories. But like it's not
going anywhere and this is not going to end up
for where I want to be.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
So there's two things I want to touch on that
because I think it's really interesting hearing you speak about
the emotional toll of being fired and hired and fired
and higher. And what I realized in my long journey
in the industry is at that moment that you understand
that the firing might be coming, and the anxiety kicks

(12:08):
in and your body goes into shock, like you're like,
oh my god, and I've done all this, and a
part of it you're pissed, right, part of it like, yo,
I've done everything for these guys or this artist, But
part of you is also like subconsciously relief because you've
also are tired of having to deal with them. But
the reality at the end of the day is like
this fear of if it's all gone, am I going

(12:29):
to not be hot anymore? Am I not going to
be quote unquote successful anymore?

Speaker 3 (12:34):
You know?

Speaker 2 (12:34):
And I was talking to a friend of mine the
other day because I said, the hardest part of the
industry because we went to the BMI Awards, and you know,
everybody was coming up and say hello.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
And I said, is that everybody will.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Come up to you now and one day they'll forget
that you were even around, Right. That emotional toll to
me is what I've told my manager is always like,
you have to realize when you've signed a client that
you're in their life for the period or the chapter
that the universe wants to you in their life, and

(13:07):
when the time it's coming to an end, you have
to be okay saying, hey, my time has come to
the to an end because my journey with them has gone,
but my career doesn't stop. That's the biggest fear of
manager has, right That's the biggest hole that a manager
feels emotionally is what if what am I after? And

(13:29):
I could understand it because so many times it does
happen where you lose the client and people stop calling
you right, people stop saying, oh, I'm gonna call Jesse
for you know the clips, and so therefore all of
a sudden you're back to trying to figure it out.
And I've seen even the anxiety when I've led the
teams in different companies that I've had where it's like,

(13:50):
where the client leaves and everybody's like, but we got
to find another one where people are gonna think and
you kick that in. Did you deal with that as
part of the journey as you were going through? Was
that consistent of a noun of like, am I really
going to succeed? As my success base on you know
this client staying with me? Am I going to be forgotten?

Speaker 1 (14:07):
I wasn't necessarily worried about being forgotten, because it's true.
As a manager, it's really hard because you're just like
super in the trenches and being a manager for a
cold act or for no acts, there's no money coming
in an agent, you can still rub sticks together and

(14:27):
kind of book other people's talent, get venues, get gigs,
get festivals, work on brands. I was able to kind
of like always create energy as an agent. But yes,
the feeling that you're always going to be fired, that
the biggest agents are always around the corner, That the
wear and tear of what happened when you're in the

(14:49):
trenches and you're just trying to get an artist off
the ground, like is constantly in your thoughts, and it
just as the even if you're stay on the artists,
as it gets bigger, is necessarily like being informed to
you know, leverage you down. In the beginning is so fun.

(15:11):
You're just like this creative force creating something in the trenches.
Everybody's saying thank you. It feels like family. And as
the artist gets bigger, you're hiring more staff, you're taking
on more infrastructure. You're trying to service this act the
best you can. And there's just so many sharks in

(15:32):
the water and there's just so many opportunities for an artist,
and like you just gotta constantly be razzling and dazzling
and delivering. And it's felt a little bit like I'm
having to stand really far behind the act and that
also was tough right, especially early on in my career.

(15:56):
But I'm a kind of guy that has bright ideas
to create things and wants to be able to speak,
you know, freely about what I believe in or who
I'm working with, or ideas that we've manifested and made
come to life. And as an agent, particularly, you never
see the agent, you know. That's like they're sitting in

(16:17):
the back and you're lucky if you post anything. Like
a booking agent is a very very very thankless job
in the music business. And I just felt like now
with this, I can stand proudly in front of my ideas.
It's not me taking ten percent of an artist to
do a thing. It's like if I work with an artist,

(16:39):
we're partners and we're creating something. Or I'm bringing opportunities
to artists or to agencies or to record labels or
to management companies that they weren't getting before, Like I'm
free money. It's like back as an agent, all of
these agencies were trying to kill me and like literally
I thought my phone was tapped. Now I get Christmas
cards from every single one of them, you know, and

(17:00):
it's like anytime I want to go to a show.
It's like, here's tickets for you, here's tickets for your client,
here's tickets for your cousin. Like what do you need?
Just bring us the deals and so I can just
feel like I can sit right in front of my
work and it's scarier because you know, working with hot
artists is like one of the greatest joys in the world.

(17:23):
Every door is open to you. You could get the
White House on the phone like that, like there's nobody
that's not taking your call if you're you know, representing
a hot artist. And like I remember going on a
plane and like, you know, when I get off the plane,
my phone explodes from how many calls and emails and
inquiries are coming in if an artist drops a hot single.

(17:44):
It was very fun and it made me more robust
and being able to handle deals, like the volume of
what comes in as a manager or agent, like they're
just chasing you all day long to bring you in
opportunities and money. It's a great place to be, but
it's just like you said, it's a season and then
it shifts and it just ultimately didn't feel like what

(18:12):
I wanted to be doing in the time. So I
changed my model, and I listened to myself and listened
to my intuition and build a next chapter for myself
that now ten years in, has allowed me to be
a marketing maven when it comes to brands and artists.

(18:32):
But I still keep the sensibility because I was in
the trenches. I was there with these artists, finding them,
developing them, helping them build their website, helping them build
their teams, helping them set up their bank accounts, helping
them you know, by their mom their first cars, like
you know, by their first pinky rings, whatever. Like we
were there making these moments happen with the work that

(18:52):
we were doing. And I know what it's like to
build those strategies and to build live brand strategies and
to rub sticks together and at a tour for an
artist that people you know might not know about yet.
And I fly that same methodology in you know, from
now what we do with brands.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
What would you what a success look like to you?

Speaker 2 (19:12):
Because you've done it all, right, Like you you've been
an agent, you've worked with brands, you get all these things.
I'm really interested in the in the human concept of success.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
It's constantly changing, right, Like I'm a big note taker,
and I'll write down and i'll read and i'll download,
and I'll think about what success means. And you know,
what my dream day looks like and what my dream
life looks like. But the definition of success, it's so

(19:42):
amorphous in this day and age like today, the definition
of success would be the ability to love what I'm
doing every single day and to know that even though
some parts are hard or work is going to be work,
that I'm doing something that has impact and that aligns

(20:06):
with my values. I have done the work on myself.
I know what I care about is really I think
what makes me feel successful every day?

Speaker 3 (20:15):
What do you actually care about?

Speaker 1 (20:29):
My values are really my personal values are about growth, impact, relationships,
and it really starts with health. I think health is
the bedrock of everything, mental health, physical health, emotional health,
being and connecting to health allows you to kind of

(20:52):
make sure your cup is filled so you can fill
other people's cups. So, you know, I think I kind
of work off of that pyramid. But I really want
to have impact, and I really want to have good
relations and I really want to see myself growing. Right,
if you're not getting better a little bit every single day,

(21:13):
you're getting worse. And the key to success that I've
learned in life is compounding and compounding in all of
its forms. Compounding for knowledge, compounding for health, compounding for relationships,
for love, for money, for wisdom, like all of these

(21:34):
things a little bit better every single day. And the
key to losing when it comes to compounding is stopping.
As long as you just keep going on a vision,
on a plan, on a career, on a mission, you
will get a little better, sometimes a little worse, but
overall you will see massive growth and you will reap

(21:55):
the benefits of your vision and your long long term thinking.
So I just know that compounding and being healthy and
being purposeful allows you to compound in the areas that
are important to you.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
What do you struggle with?

Speaker 1 (22:10):
I was having a lot of trouble with focus for
a long time. I was just all over the place,
like a ball of energy. I think my gift from
God is my energy, and that's a beautiful thing, but
I also feel like it was hard to manage to

(22:31):
some extent, and I was just very like all over
the place, and like, how do you make these things
come to life? I was like my thing was I
make crazy ideas come to life, but I just felt
a little overwhelmed. And then I got diagnosed with ADHD
last year and I started taking some medication for it,

(22:56):
and it just like changed things. It allowed things to
really start to click into place again for me. And
so I really credit the ability to harness my add
as a superpower but now also be able to control
it in a way that the energy is impactful and

(23:21):
focused and manageable.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Spoke about authenticity at the beginning of our chat, and
I feel like that's a word that we all search for, right,
That's a feeling that we all search on who we are, right.
I think the human struggle, in the human condition is
always about why am I here? What am I doing
in this place? Do I really belong? Am I really

(23:44):
good enough? These are all stories that we share with
each other. What do you think in your personal life
has been the hardest internal struggle to find love and
accept the most authentic version of who you are?

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Again, this ebbs and flows, Like, I don't believe that
it's like one moment changes your life necessarily. There are
those type of flashes, but I really think that like
it's a combination of just chipping away and you know,
almost like life's positives and negatives come from a series

(24:23):
of events and time. Even if you do get a break,
like you know what to do with that break because
of all the work you've done. Yeah, I mean, there's
a lot of things that will always get in the way.
So it's not like I could say today what's blocking
me versus last month, last year. I think it's really
about kind of understanding that, like, and this is something

(24:45):
one of my mantras or like one of the things
I write in the first page of my notebook that
reminds me every day of like the things you know
of this season is what's stressing me out right now?
Today will probably not be the stress for me tomorrow
or next week. This two will pass, and so it

(25:09):
just reminds me that, like I'm annoyed right now that
like the economy is being tanked and there's these macro
problems and you know, it's hard to kind of call
what's happening and government and the administration, and like, yeah,
that's a stressful day when like the stock market feels
like it's getting crushed, But that too will pass. And

(25:34):
the thing that really keeps me positive is that I
believe that the future that tomorrow could be better than
today because of the learnings and because of the work,
and because of you know, even if we failed, the
lessons that we learned from those failures. So the future
always looks brighter for someone that's playing a long game.

(25:56):
And so I always feel like the future looks bright
today than tomorrow or tomorrow than today. And that just
allows me to feel like everything is a lesson and
a blessing as long as you're open to learning from that.
The stresses of today will be gone, but the lessons
of today will be implied for tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Why do you think the external things that are going
on in the country and other things affect you so
much to the point that they give you stress or
they gave you stress.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Let's say today, it's.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
So many reasons. I mean on a macro level, Like
on a micro level, how was my day? I'm in Miami,
Like I woke up the sun with shining, I looked
at the ocean. It's a beautiful life. But when you
look at the kind of bigger picture of what's out
of our control, but what's happening in the world, it's concerning.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
You know, it's interesting because I feel like I struggled
before with that, right. I grew up in an environment
or especially in our business where more most of my mentors,
the way that they taught me about success and about
life was like take the bulls by the horn, and
everything matters. Everything matters, every situation, every everything that's going

(27:11):
on in the country, everything that's going in your business,
Like everything matters that much that your energy drained, right.
And what I've realized in this new stage of my
life is the complete opposite.

Speaker 3 (27:22):
None of it actually matters.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
And what I mean by that is I realize that
my intention to allowed outside things to affect me is
completely a decision. It's not by default, it's not by
just you know, it's just coming into my mind because

(27:44):
it's just the way of the world, and that's how
it flows. Now, I am deciding to be stressed about
the world. I am deciding to put my trust and
believe that I will be okay on how good the
economy is doing or how good stock market is doing,
and how good the news are you, or how good
my clients are doing. And so therefore the roller coaster
that I jump on, or that I was jumping on,

(28:07):
was completely based on things that I don't control, and
so my days depended on things that I don't control.
And I realized that there was no healthy way to
live like that, there was no positive way to find
true internal happiness. When the word happiness or the joy

(28:27):
in my life or the compounding news in my life,
we're so out of my control that the idea of
me honing in and driving the seat all the time
was a faulty one at best. Right, And what I
started doing how And I want to talk to you
about the work too, But what my work started to
show me was what that meditation showed you in the

(28:49):
transition of your career, which was we're better set and
our intention in life is to be still enough to
listen and then courageous enough to act. You talked about
in that area, right, It's like your meditation led you
to have clarity and a decision, but then it took
the courage to act. Right, because a lot of people
are like, oh, I'm just going to meditate, I'm going

(29:10):
to move to you know, to a Buddhist temple, and
I'm just gonna do no, no, no. The meditation of
the pause on the understanding that the fear and all
these things are just stories, are just narratives that we're
feeding ourselves. So we can control that narrative in our
minds if we can check ourselves and have authenticity, meaning
that you completely understand that, at least to me, that

(29:33):
it's your internal Everything is just a perspective. It's just
how you're taking it in. The problem is, our world
has taught us that what we take in is law,
So we want people to follow our law right as leaders,
even like this is my law. But it's all perspective.
It's just ideas. Especially in our business, everything is just
an idea. This is not right or wrong. It's just
an idea. And so what I've learned through my work

(29:56):
has been okay. So my job is to be still
enough to live and the encourageous enough to act. But
in between the figuring it out part, that's the universe part.
It's the part that I have zero control, and in
trying to obtain control, I am essentially trying to do
the universe's job. And therefore my body goes into contraction.

(30:20):
Whether that contraction is fear, whether that contraction is streussed,
whether that contraction is where, whether that contraction is the
idea and the story that the world's economy will affect
me to a place where I'm not okay. Someone told
me that you either trust in God or you don't,
and there was.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
No gray area.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
The gray area is where you lose sight of the
reality of who you are. The trust is the complete
let go of the surroundings. Now, we're business people, right
We pay attention to the economy, and we make decisions
based on these things. We make decisions based on how

(31:00):
much revenue our companies are making. So it's not removing
the idea of doing something. Is removing the idea that
if I don't I'm not going to be okay. It's
removing the idea that if I don't panic and don't
feel stressed and don't feel wary, then I'm not going

(31:21):
to be okay. And what I found in my work.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Is that the more that.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
I check myself when my body's in contraction, the more
I compound joyful moments of happiness because the stories I
told myself start to become diminished or they're put on
check a lot quicker. You know, I don't spend my
whole day on the subject. I spent ten minutes on it.
I checked myself. I said, WHOA, I've realized my body's
in shock because I'm learning to listen to my body

(31:49):
right back to the health point. I'm learning to listen
to where my body tingles, or my handshake, or when
I'm about to text somebody, and how you're feeling that
anger you know, or where your chin my I'm famous
for like when I'm typing, I'm doing this right, learning
how to let go as I've processed this information and
what we're doing is also allowed me to look at

(32:12):
the reality of the humans around me as a leader
and know that we're just all people hurting trying to
decipher purpose. But we're in a society and we're in
a world that feeds us the complete opposite. And so
one of the things I will love your point of

(32:33):
view on because you're a marketeer, because you work in brands,
is the power and the.

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Idea that consumption brings happiness.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Right, Like, one of the things most brands, every brand
the hires you is like, we want this artist, and
we want this because we want to sell more product,
but we want to use the artist's emotional influence.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
Because that's what they're using.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
They're using the emotional influence the artist has and and
those strings that they have with their consumer to tell
a story that you need more Coca Cola in your life,
where you need more red Buller, you need do you
find that a large part of what makes you, your staff,
the audience that you speak to be in this inter

(33:16):
race and struggle is the fact that we're sitting in
a place in society where we're being fed narrative all
the time, and very few of that narrative is the authenticity.
Most of that narrative is like, you need AI, you
need this, You're not going to be happy if you
don't do this.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
What's your POV on that?

Speaker 1 (33:39):
Well, first of all, what you're saying is beautiful, and
we should bottle that up and sell it because talk
about making the world a better place through a product.
What you're referring to is something I think everybody would
love to ingest an embody. So keep going on that
path when it comes to a partnership, Like I just

(34:00):
did a chocolate milk with Ness Quick and Dj Khalid.
You know we're in fourteen thousand stores. We launched an
original flavor. It's in Walmart, it's in Krueger's it's in public,
it's in seven eleven. I look at it and sometimes
I'm like, the deal, the deal, the art of the deal.

(34:21):
How do we get this thing over the edge with Kalid?
And how do we get you know, Nestli to buy
in and Nestlei's never done anything in music? What does
that all look like? How do we get everybody to
make the deliverables happen? Kalid's you know, got to do
his part. And then I realize we're not just selling
chocolate milk. This is a much bigger purpose. When I

(34:43):
hear that, how many millions of people are drinking this
or touching this or seeing this or affected by this,
and how it's touching a guy like DJ Khalid, who's
just a beacon of influence and spiration to so many,
And how Nessley is adjusting how they approach, you know,

(35:05):
an Austrian company, how they approach musicians and doing their
first deal ever with ness Quick and a musician. This
has so much more impact than like the concerns of
the day to day of is this gonna sell, is
this gonna look good? People gonna be happy? He doesn't
want to wear these pair of shoes, but we shot

(35:26):
him in these pair of shoes, like I'm making those
things up. But the the details of this don't necessarily matter.
They matter, everything matters, but the impact is so much
higher and bigger in everything. Even doing a talk like this,
it's like the there's the thing, and then there's the actual effect,

(35:51):
the ripple. And so I try to remind myself that
my intention and my purpose, you know, is to shine
my light up ideas, to use my energy to amplify concepts, thoughts,
artists that I believe in, brands that I love or think,
or executives that I think the world needs to see

(36:12):
and talk about and to understand better. And a lot
of what I'm doing if you look at it as
like this artist played this show and that's what it was.
They played that college cool, but that's actually not what happens.
Like when Will Smith plays a show in Philadelphia, you know,
everything'sad and done, it's like a transaction, but it's not.

(36:35):
Those three hundred people are blown away from this intimate
experience with an icon, and Will Smith becomes inspired and
he puts more pep in his step and he helps
a person and changes their life. Music could be looked
at like it's not rocket science, but or it's just music, bro,
and it can allow me to kind of like calm down.

(36:58):
But I also think that what we're doing has so
much more impact and affects so many people in such
a great way if we do this the right way.
And that's why I think these artists and us as
executives have a big responsibility. I also think that I
think having a little bit of edge and a little
bit of intention helps. Like when you say how like

(37:20):
you just let it go, do you think like that
would have been you know, you came up as the
super successful prodigy in the space, like breaking in this
industry super early. Do you think that this kind of
evolved mentality is would have helped?

Speaker 2 (37:39):
Back then, I realized that there's a very big difference
between pain and suffering. Pain you feel, suffering, you choose.
And while I think that the pain, I mean the harshhipts,
going through the hard times, the figuring out the hard
times so we can get into a point, all all

(38:00):
those things were still needed in the drive to become
and do the things that I did right like now
understanding you still need the courage, Like the universe doesn't
just go oh here you go, Alex and Jesse, We're
gonna give you a million dollars in the lotter. Like
it's at least not for me. So But the suffering
is the part that I think I didn't need. The

(38:21):
suffering is what I'm learning to let go of the
feeling because I can tell by the way that you are,
that you and I are identical in the way that
we drive and love. The creation of something that has
not been done. The project part of it is what
excites was even more than the money. I don't count
the dollars I count. Oh my god, I get to

(38:43):
do this and I get to put DJ Kalent on
Miami and then Miami stand Machine comes out and will
Talia and everybody does that part. But what I realized
was that I was suffering and doing it because in
the process I approached the things that were coming up
as pain, as mountains that I had to climb, and

(39:09):
then the fear kicked in. Then it was like, if
this doesn't go as subconsciously, it's like, if this doesn't
happen exactly hows supposed to my self? Worth is hurt
because then my idea didn't come and then people are
going to say that I couldn't pull that off, or
if this doesn't happen, I'm going to disappoint you know,
DJ Kaled or whatever client tiny and he's going to

(39:30):
consider it next time, not using my company or the
agency or the thought. And then I suffer going up
the mountain. I suffered coming down the mountain. I suffer
getting the championship trophy. And then the championship trophy is
given to me. I put it on the thing and
I don't even celebrate it because it wasn't the pain.

(39:50):
It was the suffering that made it so that it
was so once you got it, yeah, you clapped, you
went home, and you're onto the next thing, because you
didn't even get to value depending. You didn't even get
to learn the full lesson because the suffering didn't allow
you to have clarity and what it is. So what
I'm trying to release now and this is daily work
for me, this is no one has ever arrived. Then

(40:13):
let's just be clear with that out this this podcast
is about the fact that all of us are going
through this inner struggle, and I'm sitting in the same
inner struggle as so many other people in multiple things
of my life. One of those being the specific thing
that you and I share, which is like this driven
passion to also you know, not be the guy sitting
all the way in the corner as the agent or

(40:34):
the manager, but being okay, we are creators. We are
respecting our ideas, our gold, that is our God given talent.
That's what our purpose is. But how do I take
the suffering out of this? Because the suffering takes the
health away. The suffering doesn't compound the moments of joy
and happiness, the suffering least memories that as good as

(40:54):
those memories could be, when I think back to them
in the moment, I enjoy them.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
God you're such a healthy leader, right like I always
used to think and seth Godin wrote his book recently
on strategy, you have to have a chip loose to
be as successful as you can, like to be a
leader like Steve Jobs, you have to be driven from
hurt and like just a barracuda of like willing to

(41:33):
put everything out there. The chip on your shoulder is
going to put you know, chips in the bank, and
it's not a great way to live. Like in an
evolved world where we all get more conscious, like the
way you're talking about it is I think what everybody
wants to feel, and yeah, there's magic. Like I'm struggling

(41:54):
with the I want to feel good and there's a
lot of growth in the edges and pushing the limits
and going outside of your comfort zone. You're not going
to get ripped. Like just doing a very basic workout
every single day feeling good. No, you gotta go hard occasionally,
you got to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. But

(42:15):
it feels good because it's calculated and it's a smart
risk and you're not suffering and you're not nervous. But
how you do this, you're doing it in such a
healthy way. Like if you just say it flippantly, it
sounds sociopathic or it sounds like stoic, but like, you know,
I don't know how to do that like stoicism on

(42:37):
that level. But the way you're explaining it is a
school of thought that a lot of people can benefit from.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
I think it's also you know, we're talking about working out.
I think a lot of times when people hear you know,
us or other thought leaders talk about you know, the
inner health and the innerchain, they said, oh, yeah, well,
you know that's easy for you to say you don't
have to worry about your whatever the food on your

(43:07):
table or that's that.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
You say that because you got to success.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
But like the drive to your point to your question,
the drive to get there, and what I realized was
the working out and getting ripped and going faster is
not the problem. It all stands with the why you
want to do it? Do you want to do it
because the working out and getting sexy gives yourself confidence
because you feel that if you don't, you don't have value.

(43:30):
Then the real thing that life is trying to show
you and that will continue to put you in a
position to show you, is that the beauty will create
more insecurity. I realize in dating throughout my career, being
able to be around women that are considered very beautiful
to the outside world, the majority of them suffer from insecurity.

(43:52):
The majority of my friends that are extremely successful financially
suffer from insecurity and fear of failure because the value
is placed on oh, well, I'm.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
So hot, that's my value.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
And the really is that I'm trying to be I'm
trying to get my image out there, I'm trying to
be really beautiful. I'm trying the world to give me
collaps and likes because my self confidence is back that
And so when a girl who's really beautiful posts a
picture and it doesn't get enough likes, but it goes
into shock when a successful person, like when you think

(44:32):
about success, you can have wealth, you could be good
at what you're doing. Then you lose an award or
you lose a client. And wait to say, but losing
that client, maybe it could have mentioned more money.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
But the reality is you're good. If you check today today,
you're not going broke. You're today, you're good.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
But you went into shock because the value of it
wasn't just a monetary especially when you're building this, it
was what that actually means to the outside world, especially
when you're really really successful. That's why these guys need
the power beyond the money.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Yeah, and look, it's so case by case, right, Like
humans are all so different when you look at it,
because like I just to me, that's not the driver
or the fear, like I could see it being. And
you know, sometimes whatever is going to motivate you to
stay fit, right, Like you know, I do have a

(45:33):
little bit of a mantra. It's like never let yourself
go professionally or personally. But the value is not in that,
like it's the value is in how you feel, how
the people around you feel, how you make people and
you help people, and so yeah, I think, Look, people

(45:56):
are different, and I'm sure there's folks out there that
are how as hell and willing to do anything to
stay there because if they're not, then what are they?
But that's not necessarily healthy because like you know, like
I know that this is you can't stay hot in
this business forever unless you've got the sharpest shoulder, sharpest

(46:19):
elbows in the freaking planet. Like you could do it
if you're you know, willing to do whatever it takes.
But I do think it's a healthier mentality to just
kind of understand that what we do is it who
we are, and our winds are great and they feel good,

(46:42):
especially when you can put your mind and sold into
something and achieve it, but it's not the defining thing
about who you are or what you really mean to
the people that are important to you.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, I mean, I think to your point, the human
experience is very unique to each person, and it's why
I think that for me, the mantras that are really
helped me stay within my course of not the suffering.
Right For me, it's really been understanding that everything that

(47:20):
I'm intaking is going through the filter of my perspective,
of my trauma, my fear, the lessons I've been taught.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
It's so, but it's just perspective.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
It's your most valuable it's all of our most valuable trait.
It's our POV, and our POV is fed by all
of our experiences.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
But that POV can also fail you. But I also
understood in that process how much of are being is controlled, encouraged,
driven by fear.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
What are you afraid of?

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I am afraid of that I've peaked, that this is
as good as it's gonna get like that tomorrow I'll
step on something and that will lead to a downfall
of the glory of what today is. The concern for me,

(48:20):
what keeps me up at night is like with anything,
is like it was so good today, I got so
much juice out of the orange, but tomorrow the tree
is going to be dried up. You just don't want
to feel that. You want to feel alignment, you want

(48:40):
to feel abundance, and when I don't, that's when you
get to a scarcity mindset, that's where you get feeling
like a little shaky, a little bit of the confidence
is gone, and that's not where I want to be.
And so if you just remember that, like, we're in
this together and it's not about me growing. Like when

(49:06):
I look at the music business, I say, and my mentality,
especially when it comes to brands, trusting music as the
vehicle because we've got competition. This influencer world is like
they can guarantee you impressions, Like these influencer companies can
do things that I can't when it comes to music marketing.
So as many people as I can get telling good

(49:28):
stories with music and brands success stories, then the better
the pie grows. So it's almost like a mentality where
I want as many winners in this space as possible
because then we grow the pie versus me growing my
slice of the pie less interesting. So I am scared

(49:53):
that Kanye is going to fuck up the whole thing
for all of us. Daddy's going to ruin it, and
we're not going to be able to do music and
brand deals anymore. And there's gonna be a safer bet
to bet on robots or you know that Trump's gonna
tank the economy, and like this is it the end
of the rain and the dynasty's over and you know

(50:14):
it was good while we had it, but now you
know it's gonna be a new world order and we're
gonna be at war for the rest of our lives.
Like those type of things scare me, and they're out
of my control to some extent. Some of them are
in my control. I really believe that, like we have
to do everything we can. You can't just let like,

(50:36):
you know, both of us, I'm sure are going to
work until ten to eleven o'clock and then wake up
in the morning and do it again. And the reason
why we're successful is not because yeah we do self work.
We do a lot of things, but it's because we
work our asses off, right, And like we know that
we're gonna be as the owners of our companies. We're
gonna be responsible and we're gonna go get it, and

(50:58):
we're gonna do whatever it takes for for us to
be able to deliver, to succeed in whatever our vision
is to succeed. So I think it's like I personally
feel good about feeling a little nervous, like I don't know,
maybe it's the Jewish side in me, where like we

(51:18):
always just we grew up just being nervous. But like
if I'm not nervous before an event, like then we're
fucked because I'm cocky and I'm too flowy. Like it's
better when we do a project if I'm like a
little nervous, because it means that I'm going to put

(51:39):
extra caution and extra care into the awareness. So I
kind of have my own mentality with it, like I'm
you know, I had therapy today, and my therapist and
I kind of like came to this mentality of to
be okay with the uncomfortable, to learn to love the
young comfortable because the uncomfortables where the growth is. You know.

(52:03):
It's that push and pull of like I'm gonna have
to freaking go outside of my comfort zone, but I'm
also going to have to like be comfortable in that
space in order to create at my best.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
I speak about that on this podcast consistently. The biggest
transformative lesson of my life over the past two years
has been the understanding that the idea that we have
to run to the light at the end of the
tunnel is wrong. The idea is we have to feel
comfortable in the fire and the darkness because in it

(52:35):
is the lesson and what my life lessons has taught
me and my experience as I put this into practice,
because I'm a very practical guy with everything, every idea,
every thought, every religious idea, every spiritual idea, every inner
working idea, every medicine idea, is like, yeah, all that
sounds amazing, buddy, good things for the fluff. If I
can't put it into practice today, it ain't for me.

(52:57):
And that was one of the teachings I learned, and
I said, just like you in therapy, I was like, Okay,
let's go put this into practice. And I looked at
my life and I said, these are three pain points
for me, for three places that I'm uncomfortable, I'm going
to lean it. I'm going to sit in the fire.
I'm going to push myself further deeper into the pain
instead of trying to get away from that person or

(53:19):
that situation. I think and what I saw on the
other end was that I learned the lesson that was
the goal. The goal was I learned the lesson to
transformed the things that I was asking for. I was
sharing with one of the other guests that seen from
Bruce Almighty, where Morgan Freeman says, you know, you ask
God for patience and God gives you an opportunity to

(53:40):
be patient, and that's what it is. It's like you
ask God for a blank but in order to do that,
you got to sit in the fire, because the only
way you're doing is reflecting on the fact that that
part of you needs work and not running away from
the lesson, which.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
We love to do, right.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
We love to be like that's hard, that person makes
me un come, or this situational makeser that I'm out
see you.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
I always say that as a leader, I.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Find that most of the people that have quit in
my business they quit because they rather quit.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Than have a hard conversation. They rather not grow and
learn the.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Lesson and stay in a place that is like watering
their plans because it's easier to say I'm gone than
have a hard conversation. Most of the people that have
left the company have always been over not having one
hard conversation. I'm not asking something, I'm not dealing with
the problem the right way. It's never been like, oh
I'm leaving, I have a better opportunity that's like, oh

(54:40):
I'm in struggle, I'm hard, and like I'm just I'd
rather leave, And.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
It's so human to want that. It's so like it
doesn't feel good to just walk away. But it's just
leaning into the pain is where the glory is. It's
where the treasure is, It's where the growth sits. But
how did you know the lean into it? How did
you How do you know when to walk away versus

(55:07):
when to run into the fire or is it just
you go to every hard thing and you just like
try to unfuck the hard thing.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Historically, No, Historically I will feel uncomfortable I run. So
I was historically very much an architect where it was
like I'd be really amazing at running a project. The
moment the project became like hard because as you know,
as an entrepreneur, building the business is fun. Once you
like now a settled business and you've now hit that
plateau and now you have to like maintain and people

(55:36):
manage and go fight for every client.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
That's the heart.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
That's when you become a CEO and that's the hard part. Historically,
the moment I reached that, I was like I'm out.
This feels uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 (55:48):
I don't want to.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
I'm out in my relationships. Oh the whole romantic part
of the beginning, amazing love, I'm the best boyfriend, that's
the best girlfriend. The moment things got hard, I'm out,
like the moment that is like, oh well, this has
now become commitment. This has now I have to deal
with the person's bad attitude and things because it's part
of being with someone else. Wow, I'm gonna go find

(56:10):
the next thing. And then I have the thurpy session
like you did today, And I said, Okay. The understanding
of life is school, so everything that happens in my
life is teaching me something. The understanding that the universe
is in divined order my mind is now meaning my

(56:32):
soul chose my life exactly what it is because it
needed to learn something. Everything that happens to me is
a lesson. So me running away from this. If this
person wouldn't have been in my life, if I don't
have a lesson to learn, the universe would have allowed
me to get to this point in my business. If
I didn't have a lesson to learn, the universe wouldn't
have allowed the economy to hit the point that it's

(56:53):
hitting if I don't have a lesson to learn, So Creator,
what is the lesson? And I'm going to sit in
this fire until somebody takes me out, or until you
turn this freaking fire off, because I choose to learn
the lesson now so that I don't have to go
and suffer years and years to learn that same messon, because.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
I'm want to learn it one way or the other.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
By the way, that is the rule of life is
you are going to learn this lesson no matter what
you think, feel no escaping it. Now. You learn it
like this, or you learn it with more fire, or
you learn it until the freaking thing is completely on fire,
or you learn it where there's an atomic bomb and

(57:36):
your whole life goes to shit.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
But you're gonna learn the lesson.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
So that was the Okay, I'm gonna take my therapy session.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
I'm going to put it into.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Practice because the other way has not has gotten me
a lot worse results, so I'm gonna try this way.
And then I saw it work on one thing, on
the next thing, on the next thing, and I was
like like when you go to the gym and you
start getting a little one pack and you're like ooh oh,
and then you get the four and you're like, you
in the game, that's what happened. I'm in the game.

(58:05):
I'm like, this is the way to go, and I
am going to face that fear.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
It's just a story. I'm telling myself.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
That whatever that is, and it honestly has been transformative
to That's been the most transformative of the interial work.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
And it started with the therapy session.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
How long ago did you learn this?

Speaker 3 (58:24):
A year ago, a year, a year?

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Just ye oh, don't you feel like reborn? Like what now?
Everything is a teaching at a growth moment and you
just sit in it.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
And I explained to people, like again, when people hear this,
sometimes you know they admire us for going through it.
And I think there is something admirable about sitting in
the fire, right like just like when you see people
sitting in a cold plunge.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
For all day.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
But what I what I always say is the difference
is not that I stop facing these fears and these things.
The difference is that I can be aware of them.
I am not watching my experience, I am watching it
from the US and say, oh okay, wait, whit whoa
this something happened here that I'm in contraction.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
What's the lesson?

Speaker 2 (59:17):
And now I've learned that my body does this or
the stress goes this, or or I'm this or I'm
doing this.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
Oh god, what a day?

Speaker 1 (59:28):
Oh whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Whoa, that's my filters. So what's going on here? Something's
there or like? And that person was hello annoying? Why
did that person annoy me? What was it about them
that irks me? And then I start doing internal work.
I'm like, okay, so what is that? Have I felt

(59:52):
that before in my life?

Speaker 3 (59:53):
Oh? Okay, what second?

Speaker 2 (59:54):
I felt that this other day, or I felt that
last year with this other person. Why oh that comment
they made triggered fear. The triggered the inner me that says, oh,
you're not good enough. So I felt like I have

(01:00:20):
to pump my chest up in front of that person.
That's why I don't know me. I don't want them
around me because they challenge my inner worth. No, bring
that person back, and I'm gonna bring that person around
until I'm not feeling this anymore, because I need to
be triggered in order to understand that that needs work.

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):
Those little subtle.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
Changes in the way that I've been processing information while
I don't get them right all the time. Sometimes I
don't want to see the person because I'm offended. Wow,
I see the transfer. Oh, I see the change. All
of a sudden a person I didn't like, I'm like, yeah,
I can actually hang out with you. You could be friends,
you know. And it's interesting you start noticing in how

(01:01:04):
people react. You start noticing it as a leader, how
your staff acts in a meeting, all of a sudden,
when something super simple was said, but they're completely triggered
or completely blocked. Fear kicks in and then you can
deal with it. You say, whoa, whoa? You know you
have an enemy mentality? You think everybody's trying to get you.

(01:01:24):
Have you felt that before? Where about ten years ago?
Have you felt that ten years ago? And you're about
when you were a kid. Do you feel that? Do
you feel like everyone's out to get you? And you
start realizing that people have this traumas we all do
as humans, from things that happened that we didn't even
realize created that that scar and that scar or that

(01:01:48):
lesson of that healing. And we've been noticing it for
many years, but we either didn't have the capacity or
didn't have the conversation or didn't have therapy to be
able to say, hey, lean in and that that if
I could say one thing that's changed my life has
been there change my emotional life completely.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Do you feel like it's a struggle every day to
tap into that feeling? Like do you like tomorrow you're
on a plane and then you're with an artist, and
then you're sold out a show, and then you've got
a phone call rings and it's you know, your partner,
Tommy Mattola, and he wants you to come meet him
at Reyos and it's like, we're back, baby, this is

(01:02:27):
the life. And then you fall into your old habits
or you're moving so fast you know what it's like
when the dice are hot, Like you become the super
super villain version of yourself. How do you every single
day stay in that place where I'm that conscious of

(01:02:49):
how I'm feeling versus letting the momentum of this day
take you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
I've come to realize my brain is a computer, and
in order to keep my brain functioning well, there's a
couple of things that you learn to do by yourself,
which is like, if we put that into a computer world.
Maybe you know how to send an email, put an
Excel sheet, that's what you know. That's as far as
my computer skills go. That's like you and I being

(01:03:19):
able to buy ourselves, read a book, watch a podcast.
That's the self work. Then there's things that you need
to call your friend. You gotta be like aox. Do
you know how to split the screen? Like this happened
to me that I was like, I've seen it on
the recaps of the new Mac that you can split
the screen. I need to split the screen because I'm
righting this documenting this email. So I called my assistant

(01:03:39):
and they split the screen. So that's this you and
I being able to have this conversation. That's community as
being able to say, okay, great this, I have this
person here, we're having the same amount of energy and
conversation about this. I'm reminded by the conversation. And then
there's times where your computer decides to kick the shit

(01:04:01):
and you need a Google, you know, Facebook level programmer.
And to me, that's medicine, right, that's what is ioas
because that's other things. Sometimes that's religious work. That's but
I think all those things combine allow you to start
building patterns where you start understanding your brain or you

(01:04:23):
start understanding how it reacts, you start being able to
call out those things. So I fall into those things
every day, right Like again, as a heavy project manager creative,
you want everything to be perfect. So I'll be planning
something for an artist and it's like the problem has
to say this and we have to do this. And
then I realized I was like, I can plan it
all and it can still fail. So while I can

(01:04:44):
put the things in place, I'm going to release the
suffering and I'm going to say, cool, look we did
the place where everybody's done their job to do as
much as possible. But I can do all this and
the album can still fail. So how about we just
take the pressure off everybody, take a second, do what
it is, and take the information and then just kind
of like be like, hey, you want to do it,
you don't want to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:05):
Rather, I'm I'm gonna let that go.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
But you know that every detail matters, and you know
that you've got to put everything into this, and like
it's not easy to.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
The force energy has shown me that the universe will
teach you the lesson. So I planned everything Tinese concert,
and it'll truly say I planned everything. I needed the
screens to go up in the perfect time, and I
need this and it does.

Speaker 3 (01:05:31):
I need the transitions to be flawless.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
After hours of practicing, after hours of a BM correct
the machine breaks and the thing goes or my idea
of how it goes tiny goes on one tie. He
spoke on the mic internally to the ear pieces, Hey
do not put back the screen, and I was like,
but I worked so hard on this particular part because
he didn't want it. Okay, So what did I get

(01:05:55):
at overstressing over the details when the multitude of things
I could so again, it doesn't mean the irresponsibility of
not looking out.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
You put the list together, you put him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
You just released the suffering of it, because the pain
still needs to happen. You want to work on your body,
you got to put that muscle and it's going to hurt.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
You, but you don't have to suffer.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
I love it, and so that that's really been a
super transformative.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
But I think sometimes you've got to convince the artist
or the partner what's best for them. Like sometimes you
need to as the CEO, quarterback, manager, executive producer. You've
got to protect the integrity of the result. And sometimes

(01:06:41):
it requires, you know, putting yourself out there and you know,
taking the chance, taking the shot, you know, changing the
direction the wind's blowing to be able to get the
outcome that you want. Like, those aren't easy moments.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
But you need the pain. The pain needs to happen.
By the way, you can't grow muscle without the pain.
The stretching needs to happen, the breaking up of the
fibers has to happen. Like, let's just be clear, you
can't get to a super Bowl without getting a couple
of injuries.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
The pain has to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
It's just the mental suffering that I'm learning to let
go of, not the pain. The pain I want because
I'm a doer.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
I'm like you. I want to conquer the world.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
You know. I got bright ideas and things that I
believe God places me in this world to do. I
just don't want to suffer through it. And that's been
the breakthrough.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
They need to give you a church, a ted talk,
a book, deal, a.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Podcast, amen to all that you know. And it's funny. Look,
I just catch myself right you saying all those things
triggers and insecurity in me. It triggered the Yeah, I'm
accepting that, but I'm not completely receiving that because it
triggered my insecurity. But what if if you become all
that and you failed? Like it triggered it right away.

(01:08:03):
My body like it wasn't like you're right, it should
be a podcast, I should get at church. And I
was like, yeah, literally, like in practice just happened. It
triggered my indsecuit. My body got chills. Yeah, because you
triggered my lack of accepting that all the things you're saying,
it's the things that should happen. I am that, like

(01:08:24):
I believe I have a message to say the world,
but my inner child feels.

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
Like he's not good enough still, so it got triggered.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
So what do you do there?

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Just exactly what I'm doing right now, reminding myself, no,
you're one hundred percent right, and bring that energy in
and say yes, yes to a podcast, yes to a book,
yes to a TV show, yes to a church, yes
to all this amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
Let's take that right and with that, because I've loved.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
I feel like we got to do part two because
I love talking to see this you're so much. I like,
you know, the audience doesn't know this, but we just met,
like in like as far as actually conversation, I having
a real conversation, we just met. And so I love
it because so much of what you've said today, so
much of the things that you look at the world
and how you talk. And I was even sitting myself

(01:09:13):
back and saying, wow, Like when I speak on podcasts,
people must feel like I'm feeling now, like you're just
completely locked in. Like because I'm locked in, your energy
just suck the air out of the room and it's
like I am focused on you, which has it doesn't
happen very often for people like us because our brain
is going all the time. So I loved our conversation.
And I always end our podcast with the idea that

(01:09:37):
you versus use the biggest battle you're fighting, and part
of that battle is the understanding of the power of words.

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):
If I come here and I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
Say, Jesse, I love you, and I give you a
hug and I look at you, you will feel that
I come here and I give you something negative or
someone texts you, you feel that too. And what I've
realized is that we're a lot kinder to the outside
world than we are to ourselves. So I end the
podcast always with what is one word or one sentence

(01:10:12):
you can tell tell yourself right now that will transform
how the rest of your week Goess.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Stay the course. You've got a plan, you've got a vision,
you spent a lot of time working on it. You're
manifesting it every single day. The outside factors that you
can't control will come and go, they will pass. But
what you're meant to do is happening. And even if

(01:10:44):
you don't see it in this minute, don't worry about
how you feel. Worry about how the reality is actually
taking shape. So the advice to me goes back to
what I think like the key to sisses, which is compounded.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
Just let the words you just says sink into yourself
because we've shared with that, that with the audience success
we shared. I just this is a moment for you,
This is a moment of internal speech.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
Stay the course, Stay the course.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
For me, accept the blessing, this moment of just having
this conversation with you and you're saying the thing, Let
me understand how so.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
So afraid of that blessing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
It's like accept the blessing, except the blessing thatscept the blessing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
I'm focused and I'm loving this. This is a dream
come true to meet you on stage like this. We
share an office building, we're down the hole from each other.
For a year now, I've wanted to meet.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
You for them You're in the same.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
Building, on the same floor. I didn't know that I
had been wanting to meet you for years now. And
a mutual friend, Javier, put me in touch, reconnected me
with Nelly, who's amazing and we've been friends for a decade,
but we lost her, couldn't find her, and it turns

(01:12:14):
out she's here with you, and she puts us together
on the stage and in so many ways, I'm beyond
inspired by what you're saying today. And I'm connecting with
Miami greatness, music business greatness, and I just feel like

(01:12:34):
this is exactly what I wanted when I set out
to do what I'm doing, and this is beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
Thanks Jesse, Divine Order. I didn't I know you were
down in the hall of a Divine Order. Thank you
so much for joining us on this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
Thank you for having me and we didn't even get
into like so much more.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
Episode two coming in for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Tommy Montola Memorial Day weekend. Randomly, him and Talia at
uh you know, at a at a bed and Breakfast
are like a spot upstate New York, and they were
telling me we got an office in Midtown. And little
did I know that he also like was telling us.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
That we had to meet that's crazy divine order.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
Thank you, buddy, this is amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Thank you you Versus you as a production of Neon
sixteen and Entertained Studios in partnership with the Iheartmichael Tuda
podcast Network. For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app,
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